44 weeks, 51 miles and a new distance PB for a training run

My midweek running for this week was virtually non existent. I was very conscious of allowing the sweat rash on my back to heal and only did one loop of 5.4 miles on Wednesday and Thursday. I had committed to running 38-40 miles as a longest training run before Paris and it was always going to be better being 4 weeks out rather than leaving it till next week.

I had some indecision about whether this would be easier on Friday evening or last night. After the weather warnings for Saturday, I took the easy option and chose Friday as this was forecast to have the less severe weather.

Since I have ran 40 miles several times now in race conditions, I was quite confident about covering the distance in training as long as I could keep my attitude and focus at a similar intensity to races.

I had read a sports book called Epic by Simon Barnes in two sittings earlier in the week and found multiple examples of resilience from the 30 year period it covered. This was largely referenced from his columns in The Times newspaper. The best of these was around Mo Farah’s 10,000m win at the London Olympics in 2012. I found the original article this was from on The Times’ website.

I had decided on doing loops of Wythenshawe Park and set off at midnight on Friday, regardless of how the cold weather affected me in the next 8 or so hours, I was adamant that I was covering 20 laps before getting back in the car. Despite reservations from my in law’s about the safety of the area, I didn’t acknowledge any risk around leaving the car in an unlit parking area and felt quite safe at the pace I was able to maintain for the first few hours.

Psychologically I tried to split the run into 4 sections of 5 loops, this worked quite well as it was easier to think of laps remaining to get to multiples of 10 miles rather than the full 20 laps as a whole.

It was a difficult balancing act between ensuring I was maintaining my pace and not having my best efforts hidden in this run rather than saved for Paris. I slowed a bit from 10-26 miles then forced the pace for 8 miles after that. The last 6 was a real slog and I had to fight off a sharp pain on the outside of the top of my right foot when planting it on the ground. I was convinced this was in my head and although I slowed in case it wasn’t, I never thought I wasn’t going to manage the last 3 laps.

It was quite satisfying that my last mile was in complete daylight. Similar to the overnight effort I did in training for the Great Glen Ultra, there is a sense of accomplishment in conquering that element of the race outside of the comforts afforded by conversation with other runners, checkpoints etc that you get in races.

Whilst my overall pace was not in any way a guarantee I can go slightly faster in 4 weeks, I have gained a bit of confidence from having covered the longer distance in training and am looking forward to what the race will teach me about myself.